Chapter Text
Nina’s confused.
She’s sitting in a dimly lit bathroom in a world that she doesn’t recognize. It’s not home and it’s unfamiliarity claws at her. Nina’s head hurts and every single noise reverberates in her head and maybe it would be bearable if she wasn’t so fucking tired.
Nina thinks that her first priority should be assisting the civilian in need, the one that stormed off and is now talking to herself, but really she’s just worried about herself.
She’s going to be a horrible knight.
If the upheaval of her world when she wasn’t given a quest by the distributor wasn’t enough to make her fucking exhausted, surely the collision with the beast and subsequent head trauma would be.
Finding somewhere else to stay at this time of night would be near impossible, especially since Nina doesn’t have any money. She hadn’t thought to bring any when visiting the witch, and had no time to pack. So here she was, stranded.
Well, mostly stranded anyway.
Her safest option is to ask Faith to stay. Nina holds onto the amulet hanging around her neck and tugs slightly, feeling the pressure of the thread it’s strung on against the back of her neck. It’s comforting, slightly.
She waits until it seems like her lady’s conversation with herself is done. Nina steps out of the bathroom and finds Faith sitting at the dinner table. It only has two chairs at it, and the one that her lady isn’t sitting in has a stack of jackets haphazardly tossed atop it.
“My lady?”
Faith’s head snaps up from where she was glaring at a black rectangle, “yeah?”
“I was hoping, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble,” Nina starts, “that I could stay for the night and resume the search for my quest in the morning.”
“Right,” Faith stands and crosses to the hallway behind Nina, “I have some clothes you can borrow, and you can stay here until you get back on yout feet.”
Her lady’s tonen turns slightly strained towards the end, as if the idea of Nina staying for longer than a night or two is not a good idea. Which is fine, Nina has a quest to find and complete. Faith returns with a stack of clothes and hands them over. When Nina returns from changing in the bathroom, there’s a blanket and a pillow on the couch, and the bedroom door is closed, with Faith nowhere to be seen.
Nina settles herself on the couch, watching the slow fall outside the window. She goes to sleep.
~*~
Except that she can’t sleep. Her heart hasn’t stopped pounding in her ears and she can’t tell if it’s from the collision or the anxiety flooding through her veins. The new area, new people, and of course, the unrelenting feeling that she’s never going to be good enough to be a knight, all add to the worry that she’s had since she turned eight.
Nina figures she may as well cross one worry off the list and familiarize herself with her lady’s home. She walks as quietly as she can from room to room, noting that the one closed door must be the bedroom where Faith is sleeping. Is probably sleeping. If she hasn’t left and decided to let Nina fend for herself. God she hopes that’s not the case.
Nina finds a small stack of books in the living room when she returns there, and peeks through them. None of them are titles she recognizes, though they feel comfortable in her hands. She grabs the top one and sets it by the couch before returning to her investigation of the house.
She goes to the kitchen next and opens all the doors she finds. There’s not much food in the cabinets, but there’s flour and sugar, and Nina’s ecstatic to see something she knows. The next door she opens lets out a blast of cold air which surprises her for a moment, but nothing could surprise her more than what she sees inside.
Strawberries.
In the middle of winter.
How is that possible?
Nina takes the container and shuts the door to stop the cold. The berries are a brighter red than she’s ever seen before, and she’s mesmerized. Nina sets the container on the counter and takes out a strawberry. Strawberries were Jack’s favorite, she remembers.
It’s slightly humbling, Nina thinks, that through space and magic and probably time, nature stays the same, and so does the human need for sweets. Nina puts the strawberries back in the cold door.
She sits at the dinner table, at the spot where Faith was sitting on her own hours ago, and her mind spirals. What if Faith left? What will she do if she’s alone? What if she can’t find her quest? Why did she agree to this in the first place? What if Jack’s memory is never honored? What if? What if? What if?
Nina’s anxiety finally overrides her need to be polite and she inches open the bedroom door. There’s a bed, and sprawled across the entire thing is Faith, who is fast asleep. Nina watches her chest rise and fall as she breathes. Her lady’s face is calm, which in turn makes Nina calm, knowing that Faith is still here, and hasn’t run off to leave Nina alone.
She watches her lady for a few moments longer, until the pounding in her chest has subsided. Then, and only then, does she inch the door shut once more.
Nina makes her way back to the living room, feeling much better than she did before. The familiarity of the strawberries along with the reassurance that her lady hasn’t deserted her puts her to sleep better than any lullaby.